In Worlds in Harmony, the Dalai Lama explores the nature of suffering and its release through compassionate action. The book focuses on the understanding that a deep awareness of our shared desire to avoid pain leads to an awareness of our responsibility to relieve others of suffering. Worlds in Harmony offers the reader insight into the relation between awareness and right action, and bridges personal consciousness and global concerns. With the knowledge that insight is of no use unless it results in action, the Dalai Lama teaches ways of being, thinking, and acting in the world that are based on equanimity and understanding.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, describes himself as a simple Buddhist monk. He is the spiritual leader of Tibet. He was born on July 6, 1935 to a farming family, in a small hamlet in northeastern Tibet. At the age of two, then named Lhamo Dhondup, His Holiness was recognized as the reincarnation of the previous 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso. After China's suppression of the Tibetan national uprising of 1959, he was forced into permanent exile, settling at Dharamsala in Punjab, India, where he established a democratically-based alternative government. He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his commitment to the nonviolent liberation of his homeland.

Buddhist teachings and meditation offer a roadmap to help college students and others in early adulthood incorporate mindfulness into their lives as a means of facing the myriad struggles unique to this stage of life.